All Forum Posts by: Shawn L.

 Great to hear about your tremendous success up here!  Your point about having form letters furthers my initial point that it is only as difficult as knowing the regulations and putting systems in place to ensure you're in full compliance.

There is a little more to Security Deposit management in MA than just not overcharging the tenant; you have to provide them with the account number and the address of the bank the deposit is kept at, you have to pay them interest at the actual rate paid by the bank or some minimum rate if the rate is not disclosed to them, as well as some other processes.  

That said if your proverbial ducks are in a row, it's not all that difficult to do without exposing yourself to too much risk.  The key is staying on top of all the regulations and following them to the letter.

I agree overall with the sentiment that $100/door seems slim, but as @Mike Dymski stated evaluating cash flow in a vacuum is not how it should be done.  The investment as a whole needs to be evaluated to determine its viability.

Also cash flow needs to be calculated after all opex/capex/debt service, which needs to include those $350 service calls.  Obviously this can be tough to forecast but these expenses need to be anticipated and budgeted for.

@Account Closed notes above you can mail merger from Outlook contacts.  If your list is in Excel you can merge from that as well, which is what I do.  Here's a tip, in case any of your mail address Zip Codes start with a "0" save the excel file as a .csv and format the zip code column as Special:Zip Code. For some reason when saving as an .xlsx even if the column is correctly formatted as soon as you merge into word it drops the leading "0"

Template: I made a custom MS Word template for the specific lined paper I buy, with the correct margins, line spacing and font so all I do is open up a document, and instead of choosing blank document I choose my custom template so everything will line up perfectly.

Envelope: I use invitation envelopes, they're 8.5 x 5.5 so the 8.5 x 11 paper fits folded in half.  Note that I also have an MS Word template for my specific envelopes as well.

Alternatively you can outsource the whole thing.  I am the type that prefers to outsource everything I can, but I haven't been able to justify outsourcing this yet because I've got it set up so that it takes care of itself while I'm doing other things.  The worst part is stuffing the envelopes and stamping.

Hope this helps

 I'd take a look at an amortization schedule to see how little of your payment goes towards principle for the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the term of your loan.  This will probably change your thought process.

 I'd vote for this 10x if I could.  I found BP about 6 months after purchasing my first property and once I started reading I thought I had made a terrible mistake buying a property with monthly revenue just below 1% of purchase price.  I have since had a single turnover and I raised the rent $200/month and still had well over 100 inquiries on the listing.  I would imagine this is not so easy to achieve in some of the 2% to 3% markets.

@Jeff Copeland Oh I agree 100%. If you read my post carefully, my point was that it is easy to change the property insurance and that's exactly what I did. Simple fix. And yes, the lender sees the change to the insurance certificate and they also see the change on property taxes as well.

The title insurance angle is a good point and a potential sticking point that people should be aware of depending on what their policy allows.

I've seen this argument a number of times and I'm beginning to wonder if I'm missing something. Before even forming an LLC I spoke with my Insurance Agent and ensured that the property policy could be changed from my name to the LLC. I set it up so that the transfer of ownership and the insurance policy transfer were effective the same date. I agree with you that if this is not done then there could be a serious issue in the event of a loss, but it seems that the fix is rather simple.

Is there more to the elephant that I'm not seeing?

@Jason M Pagan I'll add a bit of commentary to @Evan Bell's response.

Towns/Cities in MA typically have assessor's databases on their website. If you go to the Town's website and link to the Assessor's Department, usually its in there somewhere. Each town is a little different and some are much more obvious to locate than others, but I've been able to find them for the dozen or so towns I've searched in thus far. Once you get into the database, just search for the property and a bunch of info will be on there, including owner, mailing address and other pertinent data. Make sure you send your letter to the mailing address listed for the property in case it is tenant occupied.

Alternatively if you go to masslandrecords dot com you can search by county. I typically only use this site to research the deed and any mortgages on the property as it is quite a bit more cumbersome than the town/city databases are.

Hope that helps.

@Michael DeFrancisis Thanks! I definitely recommend having something set up to answer calls. While I suppose I could answer at least some calls while at the office and not tied up in a meeting, it is just not something I'm going to do on the company's time. The only other alternative is a voicemail but I think that a lot of people would not bother leaving one. The thing I like about Patlive is that you can set up your own script and then you receive an email right after the call with all of the details of the call. I assume this is a feature that is common to other call centers as well.

As far as the GV number, I did end up porting it to Patlive due to the issues. It has worked seamlessly since doing so.

Let me know if I can provide any further information. Good luck with your direct mailing as well!

Shawn